LESSONSFROM THE PAST

In January 1989, a troubled drifter in his 20s opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle in a California elementary school yard packed with students. Five children between the ages of 6 and 9 were killed in the fusillade; 29 others were wounded, along with one teacher.

The resulting national shock and outrage plunged Congress into a debate over whether to ban military-style assault weapons.

“The American people are fed up with the death and violence brought on by these assault weapons,” Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio, said on the Senate floor. “They demand action.”

Action, however, would take time. The gun lobby put up roadblocks. It took five years of legislative slogging to pass a federal assault weapons ban that took effect in 1994. But the price of passage was a host of compromises – most painfully for supporters, a sunset provision added late in the wrangling that paved the way for the measure to expire in 2004.

Now, after another massacre at an elementary school by a gunman wielding a semiautomatic rifle, the Obama administration is working to develop new gun-control proposals. With calls for reviving the assault weapons ban, the experience of the early 1990s offers lessons that can inform the current debate.

DIFFICULT POLITICS

Just as it was then, the most difficult terrain to navigate will most likely be political, as any new federal measure would have to overcome the opposition of pro-gun lawmakers and the gun lobby. But contours of the policy will also be nettlesome. As states and the federal government have experimented with various kinds of assault weapons bans, gun manufacturers have excelled at finding ways around restrictions, tweaking their guns just enough to comply with new laws.

Beyond the policy questions facing lawmakers, however, lie tricky political calculations – just as there were two decades ago.

The chief protagonists then included three senators: Metzenbaum, a longtime liberal firebrand from Ohio; Dennis DeConcini, a moderate Democrat from Arizona; and Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who was new to the Senate. In the House, Rep. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., now a senator, was the workhorse.

The most surprising member of the group was DeConcini, who had consistently voted with the NRA.

A GALVANIZING MOMENT

The Stockton shooting, however, was a galvanizing moment, DeConcini said in a telephone interview. He approached NRA officials to see if they would work with him in drafting a “responsible bill,” he said. After conversations over several months, however, he said, NRA officials broke off talks, saying they feared they would lose members if they went along.

“I'll never forget that,” he said.

Both Metzenbaum and DeConcini introduced bills to ban assault weapons after the Stockton shooting. A proposal passed the Senate that year but went nowhere in the House.

In the years that followed, more high-profile mass shootings involving assault weapons made headlines.

Crucial to how the ban finally moved forward in 1993, however, was the emergence of a large omnibus crime bill, filled with popular measures, like adding 100,000 police officers to the nation's streets, a top priority of the Clinton administration.

BIDEN AS QUARTERBACK

Through some nimble legislative footwork, the ban's supporters in the Senate, led by Feinstein, were able to get a version of the ban added to the crime bill and through the Senate in November 1993.

Although there was pressure from the White House to drop the assault weapons ban for fear that it might scuttle the entire crime bill, its proponents held fast, former staff members recalled.

“That was courage,” said Michael Lenett, a former adviser to the Judiciary Committee, assigned to Metzenbaum, who died in 2008.

The quarterback of the crime bill was Joe Biden, who was then a senator from Delaware and chairman of the Judiciary Committee. President Barack Obama has tapped Vice President Biden to lead an interagency effort to develop new anti-violence proposals.

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